We’ve come across a letter in the Hatfield Historical Museum written in 1862 that sheds some light on the life of older single women in the middle of the 19th century. (You can read its transcription HERE.) It was posted from Manlius, New York, an area opened up after the Revolutionary War, when a minimum of 100 acres was given to all enlisted men as a reward for their service (known as the Military Tract of Central New York). It was developed further by the opening of the Erie Canal. Manlius apparently attracted Hatfield, MA, resident Euroclydon Gerry, who moved there and married a local woman, Paulina Avery.

Writing to her Hatfield sister-in-law Martha Gerry, Paulina speaks of the difficulties of a 60-year old widow trying to keep afloat financially and spiritually. Widowed for 12 years, she finds herself burdened by the day-to-day job of just getting by. As she relates, “I cannot furnish but a small part [of my house] as I divided my things with my children keeping but two beds and I have but one of them.”

To make ends meet, she is forced to take in three borders. She is plagued by buyer’s remorse at having bought a house “larger than I need but it is the cheapest place that was for sale in the place and I was foolish enough to buy it at six hundred dollars.” She continues to beat herself up over the $100 it took to furnish the place as “it looks so foolish to me now that it almost upsets my mind and makes me very unhappy indeed.” She seems so unsure of herself, in fact, that she chooses not to tell relatives that she has bought the house and is determined to “sell it as soon as I can turn it well and not loose [sic] any thing “ as “it seams [sic] as if will make me to [sic] much care.”

Flirtation with spiritualism

The letter also shows Paulina’s flirtation with spiritualism, a movement which originated in upstate New York and attracted overwhelmingly female adherents. She writes of how a medium helped her contact the spirit of Martha’s departed sister Lucretia, who had died in 1851, and now reported that her “Spiritual home was a pleasant one” but less so than if she had “understood the phylosephy [sic] of Spiritualism while on earth.” We do not know if Paulina suspected a business pitch in the last remark, but she ends her letter unconverted.

Interestingly enough, the great political affairs of the nation (the Civil War, for example) are not mentioned. What remains is an intimate letter focusing on family matters tempered with some rudimentary speculations on the larger issues of life and death.

Wayne Schlegel, in addition to being a volunteer for the Hatfield Historical Museum, has been a teacher for the last 40 years, both in English and ESL, in the United States as well as in China, Japan, Qatar and Myanmar. He lives with his wife Leslie (also a teacher) in a historic house in Hatfield Center.

The great thing about letters is that they give you a window into the life of the sender, and sometimes into the life of the receiver. But they often leave mysteries in their wake, and this letter is no exception. It was written in the fall of 1843 by Hatfield native Dr. Waitstill Hastings from Erie County, Ohio. He’d married Lucinda Wood in Herkimer County (NY) around 1796, and thereafter they raised eight sons in Ohio. He wrote this letter to his “dear Sister” Mary (Hastings) Wait – the widow of Daniel Wait, who’d died 10 years earlier.

It wasn’t easy being a physician in the 19th century, and this letter suggests a few reasons why. Dr. Hastings was late in writing to his sister because he was chasing a fugitive who’d skipped town in the middle of the night without paying his medical bill!

“He made his escape from this county on Saturday, of last week, about 2 O’clock A.M. I started on Saturday after noon [sic], overtook him in the city of Monroe, in the state of Michigan on the succeeding Monday, after riding on horseback that day and late at night, I traveled 74 miles & [?] took the fugitive and family, about 100 miles from my place of Residence,…”

To find out what happened, you’ll have to take a peek at the letter itself, alongside its wonderful transcription done by Williamsburg historian Ralmon Jon Black*.

So, here are a few mysteries we’re left with: Was chasing after clients to get paid a common practice for doctors in the mid-19th century? We typically think of physicians today as making better wages than other professions, but in the 19th century, were local doctors struggling to make ends meet?

Waitstill notes that a neighbor died unexpectedly while he was off chasing his patient. Did the family bear Waitstill any ill will because he wasn’t there to help? Was it supposed to be his repsonsibility?

What is amazing about the trip he recounts (assuming Waitstill’s birth date of 1771 and letter date of 1843 are both correct), is that the doctor giving chase day and night on his trusty steed is not a scrappy 30- or 40-something, but a 72-year-old! What does that tell us about his physical, mental – and economic – condition?

He does tell sister Mary that “we are at present enjoying comfortable health,” but he also describes selling the farm (at less than its value), and makes a plea for a loan from “some of my Brothers or friends…” Waitstill says he could pay it back the following summer, though, since he has “about 20 to 30 acres of wheat on the ground & extremely good for the season.” And perhaps if money was not scarce, he wouldn’t have ridden day and night to chase down his fee! He tells us he received $10 for his traveling expenses, but he never says what he was owed.

We don't learn much about sister Mary here, but sometime soon I'll post pictures of a few of her belongings that we hold in the Hatfield Historical Museum -- which give us clues.

If you have letters from Hatfield’s past that you’re willing to share or donate, we’d like to see them. They are the best connection we have to the real people who lived here before us, and they help us see what life was really like.

*Ralmon Jon Black is also an adopted Hatfield native son, as the eighth great-grandson of notable Hatfield residents Benjamin and Martha (Leonard) Wait. But those Waits are a story for another day!

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Curator's musings...

As the curator of a small town Historical Society museum, I wonder a great many things. Am I alone in these thoughts that come to me while driving, or exercising, or falling asleep at night? Is it unusual to be constructing displays and writing copy in one's head for an enlarged museum space that does not, as yet, exist?

If you're wondering about the blog title, "Bird by bird," see my First Post for an explanation! Click HERE to read it.

When I'm not thinking about our museum or rehousing artifacts with my fellow museum committee members, I'm helping out with the Pioneer Valley History Network (of which I'm a board member), collecting or editing digital oral histories (see words.pictures.stories)or keeping track of my two teenage kids.